Equilibrium
by brumalbreeze
Summary: Sometimes, things aren't always as they seem. Blood-curdling screams aren't as scary as they sound and mysterious things happening outside aren't harmful at all. ...Oz, Alice, and Gilbert Friendship Fic...


**A/N: This also doubles as my contribution to the winter holidays. Happy and warm holidays, everyone. Hope you're all doing well.**

**Beta-read by Nadramon.**

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A hair-raising scream tore through the premises of the Rainsworth mansion, echoing shrilly down the hallway. It sounded like bloody murder.

Gilbert shot up, instinctively grabbed the revolver from under his pillow, and bolted to his door, his heart going insane. He narrowly avoiding tearing the door off its hinges in his haste and stumbled out, gun cocked and ready. His eyes were bloodshot and widened, and he was panting.

"What's wrong!" he yelled out, looking wildly up and down the hallway to see where the scream had come from. He saw no one. His first instinct was to run to Oz, but he needed to know what was happening first.

Down the hall, he heard the other inhabitants talking in hurried, confused tones. They were probably wondering the same thing he was.

There was a rustle of ribbons and cloth, and he suddenly spotted Alice running toward him, apparently halfway through the process of dressing. Her usually neat and plaited hair was comically sticking out on one side, the large ribbon of her outfit was not tied, and she only had one boot on. The result was a very odd staccato melody clacking down the floor.

"What is this? What is this!" she kept saying, her amethyst eyes large and surprised. She looked lost.

"What is _what_?" Gilbert demanded, nerves still tingling with adrenaline. He was ready to bolt off at the slightest sign of danger.

Alice ran past him, apparently heading toward Oz's room. "I don't know! I don't know! There's white stuff falling from the sky outside! What _is_ it?" she cried over her shoulder as she bolted away. The last he saw of her was a slip of red fabric swishing around the corner. Gradually, the mismatched tune of her running faded away.

The man lowered his gun and clicked it back on safety slowly. He paused and mulled over her words. White stuff…? Gilbert's eyebrows furrowed as he walked back into his room and went over to the windows. With the barrel of his revolver, he pushed the thick, velvet curtains aside. He slapped his forehead with his open palm.

_Stupid rabbit!_ he thought with a growl.

She had woken up the entire family and staff of the mansion because it was _snowing_.

* * *

"Oz!"

The door to the boy's room nearly imploded as Alice bounded into the room.

"Hnngh!" he snorted, jolting awake and throwing his limbs up awkwardly in his not-quite-awake state. The blonde didn't have any time to recollect himself (or wipe the drool off the side of his mouth) before a flurry of ribbon flounced into his face. Something grabbed his shoulders and began to jostle the rest of the sleep out of his system.

"Oz!" Alice yelled again.

"A-Alice!" he replied, finally realizing what monster had seized him. "Wh-What's the matter!" His voice came out in broken intervals, due to her violent shaking.

Her eyes grew wide as she stared at him. "Something's happening outside! There's—_Geck_!"

She was abruptly forced to stop when someone grabbed the back of her collar and hefted her off the bed. Gilbert put her on the floor and began lecturing angrily.

"Don't attack Oz! You're not supposed to do things like that to people! Do you know you just scared the entire mansion into thinking that—"

"Stupid Seaweed Head! What do you think you're talking about? There's clearly something wrong going on outside, since everything's all white and—"

"Wait!" Oz cried out, silencing them both. His two companions paused in their bickering and stared at him with opened mouths. "Just what's happening here?" he asked, rubbing at the corner of his eyes and stifling a yawn. His eyebrows were pinched downward to express his annoyance at having such an alarming wake-up call.

"I woke up and started dressing when I noticed that there was all this weird white stuff coming from the sky and—!"

Gilbert clapped his large hand over Alice's mouth and held her still. "What she _means_ to say is," he said, with the slight undertone of an exhausted growl, "that it's snowing outside."

The blonde's eyes widened exponentially in disbelief. "It's _snowing_?" he breathed incredulously. Immediately, he shoved his blankets away, raced to his window, and threw the curtains open, crying out in surprise. He turned around, face flushed with exhilaration and eyes glittering with unfounded joy. "It _is_ snowing!" he exclaimed, laughing and pressing his hands hard against the glass.

Small flecks of frozen water were flittering downwards from their heaven-bound home. Not everything was covered in a blinding white, though it seemed like that would be the case if it continued at that rate. Things were shining brilliantly and took on a guise of sinlessness.

For a moment, both Gilbert and Alice were stunned by the boyish beauty of Oz in its purest form. Their breaths ceased to come for a moment. Alice was the quicker one to recover, however, and bit Gilbert hard, forcing him to release her with an angry exclamation. While the man was wiping his hand on his sleeping clothes, she asked, "'Snowing'? What's that? Is it good to eat?"

Oz laughed again, the sound chiming throughout the room pleasingly. "It's 'snow,' Alice, and yes, it is good to eat." He giggled and added, "Sometimes." The boy clapped his hands together happily, and he turned his gaze up to Gilbert, who still looked a bit peeved at having been bitten. "Gil!"

The servant's attention was immediately riveted to his master. He was distracted fleetingly by the blush on Oz's face. "Y-Yes?"

"Let's go out and play! Do you remember the last time we played in the snow, and I buried you? And then I hid, so you were crying for so long in the cold! And—" He continued babbling excitedly as he made his way over to the two of them. Occasionally, he glanced out the window, as if scared that it would stop snowing any second and his fun would be spoiled.

Alice had a look of intense concentration as she tried to absorb everything the boy was trying to say, but it was suddenly overtaken by jealousy when Oz began tugging on Gilbert's sleeve. She began yanking on Gilbert's other sleeve, resulting in the poor man's situation as the object of the two children's tug-of-war. His mind spun as he was assaulted on both sides by a mix of, "Let's go, Gil!" and "_Let_ go, stupid Seaweed Head!"

"_Wait_!" he roared, imitating Oz's earlier method of shutting them up. It was effective insomuch as they stopped shrieking and calling, but he was still being torn apart by the arms. Gilbert panted, completely frazzled by the turn of events in the early morning. It couldn't possibly have been past six, and yet they were all raring to go. "We need breakfast," he gasped aloud, ready to collapse to the floor.

_I'm getting too old for this_, he thought half-sarcastically as his torturers ran out of the room with little regards to their state of dress (and undress, since Alice still only had _one_ boot on) and the possibility of the chefs not even being awake yet. The latter part of the problem Gilbert doubted, since Alice's scream was sure to have woken up at least three quarters of the household.

He could hear them as they prattled excitedly, Oz trying his best to explain everything he knew about snow and Alice shooting question after question at the boy, acting more as an interrogator than curious passerby. Soon, the room was quiet, and Gilbert heaved an exasperated sigh.

They would get their share of snow today, but first, he had to hunt them down.

* * *

It was a miracle how Oz didn't choke on his food as he seemingly swallowed without chewing. Gilbert smiled after he told him to slow down for the seventh time, knowing that it was as effective as telling Alice to stop calling him "Seaweed Head." Fondly, the servant recalled the days Oz and he had gone playing in the snow. To him, it seemed like an eternity ago, and he realized that it was a "long time" since Oz had seen snow as well, though….

He shook his head gently and sipped at his tea. His master had always been completely infatuated with the snow.

"Hurry up, hurry up! Gil! Hurry, hurry!" Oz implored him, gripping the sides of the breakfast table tightly. A piece of toast was still stuck on the corner of his mouth, since he hadn't even bothered to eat like a human being in his haste.

"There's a bit of bread on your—"

Gilbert didn't even get his sentence out before Oz crudely stuck his tongue out to the corners of his lips and licked off the offending morsel of food. "There!" he proclaimed. The man sat in shock at his master's unrefined behavior. He was infinitely relieved that no one else except for them (the rest of the household had gone back to sleep after the situation was explained, though the poor chefs were roused to make breakfast) around the table. When Oz began to poke him, he snapped back into life. "Um," he began, only to be interrupted by Oz's, "Come on!"

Alice hastily licked the last bit of sausage off her fork (Gilbert wondered if he were living with savages for a second) before joining in on the harassment. She seemed goaded by the sense of urgency she felt from Oz. Haphazardly, she picked up her boot from the floor (having toed it off the minute they sat down), and leaned forward as well. "I want to see what the white stuff outside is!"

Carefully wiping _his_ mouth, Gilbert said, "First, we have to change into warmer clothes. I'm not letting you two out there like this." He barely finished his sentence before Oz disappeared again.

"We have to change before we can eat snow?" he heard Alice mutter while she chased after the exuberant blonde.

Gilbert chuckled as he walked after them, knowing that Oz would practically be rendered useless at changing, with all the jittery excitement exploding in him. He shook his head, getting a feeling he would be chasing the two down a lot and hoping he wouldn't wear himself out too quickly.

* * *

All the while he was trying to dress Oz up, he boy kept endeavoring to "help" him, which actually retarded his progress significantly. (Alice was on her own because, even if he was willing to aid her—which he _wasn't_—she probably would have clawed his eyes out.) Gilbert glanced up from his buttoning work when he heard Alice grunt with effort. He looked just in time to see her yank her boot on and promptly fall over. The servant couldn't help but snort in amusement, but he didn't stop to advise her that she should have put her boots on before wearing her thick jacket. She could barely even bend her arms. Oz giggled and ran over to help her up once the last button was done.

Gilbert assumed his master had asked Alice if she was okay from the way she flailed (a humorous sight, he admitted, seeing her flap her arms like that in such clothing) and exclaimed, "Of course I'm fine! Who do you think I am!" With a smile, he picked up his scarf from the back of a chair and wrapped it around his neck.

He saw Oz peek at him out of the corner of his eyes. Quickly, he mollified the ruffled girl and trotted to his servant. The blond stopped in front of him and waved him down to his level. Mystified, but compliant, Gilbert leaned down to Oz. Cool fingers passed around his neck, having delved into the soft folds of his scarf, and he teased the man's hair loose.

"There!" Oz proclaimed proudly, leaning back with his hands on his hips. "Gil looks better now!"

The servant gazed softly upon the boy and touched the edge of his scarf. When Oz beamed back at him, he felt deliciously warm. Then, the moment broke, and Gilbert wondered if the girl was doing things on purpose to get Oz's attention, because now she was attempting to strangle herself with _her_ scarf, which resulted in his master bounding toward her to help.

Exasperated, but helpless, Gilbert could do naught but wait until Alice was properly outfitted and Oz put on his scarf.

"Ready?" he asked tentatively, knowing full well what the answer would be.

Immediately, Oz whipped around and, with a bright grin, said, "Yes!"

"Let's go then," he smiled.

Alice rolled her eyes and huffed, "Finally!"

"Aw, don't be like that Alice. You'll like it, I'm sure," Oz was saying as the two of them made their way to the door. Quietly, Gilbert followed behind.

Signs of the reawakening staff were showing up around the mansion, revealing themselves in slips of quiet conversation and cameo shots from faraway. A few servants nodded to them in greeting, and Gilbert returned the gesture, seeing that the two children were so preoccupied with their prating.

At the large front door, the blonde stood with poorly veiled excitement. His eyes were positively glowing as he placed his hand over the doorknob. "Ready, Alice?" he asked, clearly trying to build up the suspense.

Impatiently, the girl crossed her arms. "Come on, stupid manservant! Stop making me wait!"

Instead of being insulted, Oz, as usual, laughed and finally caved in. He pushed down on the knob and flung the door open, allowing his clear mirth to filter through the crisp, clean air. Alice's breath was literally taken away from her.

The cold hit them hard, but it was refreshing all the same.

Gilbert smiled as he watched them stare awe-struck at the beauty of it all. It was bright outside—almost painfully so. Snow was still flickering down silently, and a good deal more was covered by it now. An occasional breeze swirled the flakes around its finger before blowing it away over its palm. They strained their ears to listen to the icy laughter of Winter seeping through the air.

None of them said anything for the longest of times.

"Haah," Alice breathed in the invigorating air, taking a chary step toward the entrance. The blonde gripped the edge of the door and tittered, pleased at the face the girl was making. His cheeks were already rosy again, and wisps of his breath were being snatched away by the wind outside. "It's…" she began and stopped. Her hair fluttered delicately in the breeze as she turned around to face Oz, dumbstruck.

"Beautiful," he finished for her, gaze settling fondly upon her before sliding outside again. "Isn't it?"

At that moment, Alice laughed, exquisitely and purely, like the child she looked like. Gilbert was slightly taken aback by how charming it sounded (unlike the maniacal way she usually cackled). She almost sounded like Oz: wonderful and captivating.

Her face took on a new life, and she darted outside without any inhibitions. Oz took after her, sounding just as pleased as she was.

Something pulled him in his chest, but Gilbert held himself back. There was a nagging voice in the back of his mind telling him that he couldn't possibly act just like them. He was older. He was an adult. It wouldn't have been right, it kept telling him, for him to just dash out there without a care in the world.

But then, he bit his lip, took in a deep breath, and ran out as well, allowing the door to slam behind him. Back-of-the-mind voice be damned.

He laughed delightfully into the brumal air, feeling lost and everywhere as specks of white stuck to his face and clothing. Oz was spinning around with his arms out, ruddy-faced and cheerful, while Alice was treading through the slushier parts of the snow. She kept lifting her feet and examining her footsteps, absolutely fascinated by them. Gilbert stopped about ten meters away from the two, chest heaving and grin on his face. He hadn't felt so free in a long time.

As the flakes fell upon his hair, stuck, and melted, Gilbert watched Oz teach Alice how to open her mouth and catch them on her tongue. They kept giggling and pulling their tongues back in, only to grin at each other, pseudo-dragons with their harmless smoke. Alice commented on how tasteless but beautiful they were, a statement Oz nodded vigorously to. The two of them continued to roar and laugh and allow their breaths to escape in cloudy puffs.

His young master suddenly waved to him, told him to, "Look, Gil!" (which he did), and held out his hand in a strange position. Then, he brought it up to his mouth, inhaled with his eyes closed, and smiled. For a moment, no wave of life came from either nose or mouth, but then, Oz opened his eyes halfway, looked directly at Gilbert (thereby taking away _his_ breath completely), and exhaled gently. A stream of smoky breath trickled from his mouth and drifted away, momentarily playing across his features. It was an oddly sensual scene, seeing Oz in such a peculiarly familiar pose. Gilbert blushed further, though it certainly wasn't the cold causing it.

When the last traces of Oz's "cigarette" whispered away, the boy let out a jocular bark of laughter and called out, "Did I look like you, Gil?" He clasped his hands behind his head and giggled. The illusion broke like thin ice over a pond, and Gilbert breathed again.

He was about to reply when something hit him—hard—on the back of the head, and he nearly fell forward from the unexpected force. Wet, cold ice slid between his hair and down his neck. Gilbert stumbled forward a few steps before recovering. His hands immediately went into action, brushing away the offensive slush. Somewhere behind him, he heard the stupid rabbit laughing, and Oz was going, "Alice, you really got him!"

Angry and confused, the dark-haired man turned around to see who the culprit was.

Alice was standing cockily with her hands on her hips and head thrown back, laughing away like a psychopath. It was clear that she was pleased beyond all reasoning. Gilbert growled, embarrassed at having fallen for Oz and Alice's trick (though he was sure that it was Oz's idea in the first place). Hastily, he grabbed a handful of snow by his feet and packed it into a ball. He wound his arm back and threw it with a grunt.

Lilac eyes widened in surprise as Alice tried to dodge the attack, but she failed. The snowball exploded on her face, and she shrieked. The girl quickly ran the back of her arm over her face and growled, already taking aim for Gilbert with another shoddily made snowball.

"Snowball war!" Oz cried behind Gilbert.

Gilbert scrambled away to find a good fort to hide behind, narrowly dodging another snowball that Alice had thrown at him. Suddenly, a snowball sailed in a gentle arc over to Alice. It landed short, but Gilbert followed its origin back to where Oz was hiding. His master turned to give him a cheeky grin, and he knew that he wasn't safe from either of the two.

The fight lasted for well over forty minutes, with Oz and Alice somehow forming an alliance against Gilbert. (It wasn't a surprise though; he should have known from the very beginning.) Though he tried his best, there was no way he could have won in a two-to-one battle. In the end, the children bum-rushed the poor servant and bombarded him with snow. It was a messy affair, and more than a few fingers were numb with cold by the end of it all. Everyone was breathless and laughing so hard, it hurt. (Except for Gilbert, who just hurt all over in general, laughing or not.)

Pieces of crumbled snow were melting on their clothing, and healthy glows dusted their cheeks. They laughed good-humoredly (Alice a bit more malevolently than Oz) as Gilbert flailed and tried to get out of the slippery death-trap they had buried him in. Eventually, the dark-haired man gave up and lay still, his own breathy laughter whirling into the chilled air in front of him. Staring up at the two beautiful, happy faces around him, Gilbert felt as if he could die right then and there without regrets. With Pandora's missions, Chains, and so much going on, there hadn't been any time to relax. And now, it was all just….

He closed his eyes and spread his arms and legs out wide before sweeping them back and forth. His clothes were already wet and dirty, so it didn't matter to him at all.

"Snow angels!" he heard Oz exclaim. Gilbert opened his golden eyes and smiled. Suddenly, there was a soft, wet _plop_ somewhere next to him, and his master was creating his own little angel. Alice, not wanting to be left out, watched them for a second before choosing a nice spot next to Oz to lie down and did the same.

The children were giggling beside him as they swept snow away from themselves. Even after they finished, they didn't get up. Gilbert left his arms flung out to his side and his legs in a similar pose. The dark-haired man turned his head slightly to see two trails of white smoke ascending from the bodies next to him, exhausted but happy. Suddenly, he felt a tiny, cold hand touch his hand and, though his first instinct was to jerk away, he allowed Oz to press their fingertips together. Numb and wet, they slid clumsily past each other until Gilbert shifted over somewhat, and their hands linked together comfortably.

When Oz moved a little away from him, Gilbert knew that his master was doing the same for Alice.

There was a moment of long-standing silence in which all three of them did nothing but hold hands and stare at the bleached sky above them. Snow was still falling, though it was more gently now. Occasionally, they had to blink the flakes from their eyelashes and blow the melting bits away from their lips.

"Fuwaah," Oz breathed out contently. Despite not being able to see it, Gilbert knew his master was grinning. He tightened his hold on the boy's hand. "That was fun!" Neither of his friends responded, but he didn't seem to mind. "I think I could stay out here forever like this…."

Gilbert smiled at the pure, childish wish. A light breeze passed them, throwing the light flakes diagonally toward them, and he spoke up. "We'll get cold if we keep lying here though."

The contemplative hum he received as an answer was neither here nor there, but it was enough for him to work off of.

"And you're tired too, aren't you?" he asked the blue-less sky. No matter how much time passed or how long the absence had been, Gilbert doubted he would ever forget how to tell whether his young master was sleepy or tired. When his voice began to decrescendo softly from a boisterous swell into a mellow and sweet quality, when his verdant eyes became dew-dropped grass of early mornings instead of burning boric acid, and when the touch of his hands turned from blazing pokers to fluttering embers—that was when Oz was tired. "We should go back in," he said.

"I don't want to go back in yet, Gil," Oz stubbornly reported. Gilbert felt the back of his hand getting scraped with his master's nails. "I'm not cold. Nor am I tired."

"But that stupid rabbit is. She probably fell asleep by now."

The two of them fell silent, straining their ears to hear anything from the usually rambunctious girl. No answer was forthcoming. They listened harder and suddenly realized that there was a soft strain in the air, like heavy breathing. Quietly, the blonde chuckled.

"Alice did fall asleep…." He made a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat. "Carry me, Gil. I don't want to walk in by myself."

Gilbert closed his eyes and imagined how Oz must have looked next to him, cradled in the snow's outline; lips, nose, and cheeks smeared with natural rouge; and eyelashes pale with crystals of water clinging onto them. He opened his eyes. "What about the idiot rabbit then?"

"Carry her too, of course."

He wasn't sure how it was going to work out, but if his master demanded it…. Unable to help it, the servant chuckled.

Lying there just talking to Oz, Gilbert suddenly felt like he didn't want to get up either. Perhaps, he wondered, Oz's earlier suggestion of staying outside forever wasn't so bad. But then, the rational part of his mind kicked in, he squeezed Oz's hand one last time before releasing it, and he stood up. Hastily, he shook the snow from his hair and brushed away as much snow as he could from his coat.

All the while he was trying to make himself presentable, Oz just lay there with a warm, glassy gaze and almost-timid smile, watching him. His pale hand was still tucked together with the slumbering Alice's. Gilbert thought they looked like dolls.

He offered his hand out to his master, feeling absurdly surreal as it was taken, and Oz drew himself up slowly. Alice's hand rested stilly on the snow. Gilbert stumbled back when the young boy fell forward and nearly collapsed into his embrace. He felt Oz's hum trickle through his chest and throat as the boy steadied himself. The grip on his upper arms and elbows was reassuringly solid and tangible.

Once the man was sure Oz wouldn't fall over, he went over to Alice and stared at her intensely. Gilbert found that he could not openly hate her at the moment, especially when her dark hair was splayed around her, flecked with white. Her mouth was partially open and each breath she released sent a whorl of smoke into the air. She looked calm and, for the lack of a better term, sane. Oz walked up next to the girl and smiled.

"Come on, Gil," he said, pushing his blonde hair from his face. Due to the moisture of the melted snow, it stuck to his cheeks and forehead.

Gilbert acquiesced to the order and bent down to pick Alice up from the snow. He supported her weight from under her back and knees, making sure she wouldn't fall. Naturally, her hands fell into her lap, and her face tilted toward his chest. Her cheeks were dusted lightly with blush and snow. "Oz," the man called out softly, not wanting to rouse the girl (and get slugged in the face or something equally painful). He remained kneeling.

Picking up the hint from his servant's genuflection, Oz looped his arms around Gilbert's neck, buried his face into the damp mess of dark hair, and carefully tucked his knees around the man's waist.

"Hang on tightly," he said, already hoping that Oz wouldn't choke him (and that Alice wouldn't awaken).

The warm breath in his ear made him shudder. "I will. Don't worry."

With some effort, Gilbert stood up and turned back to the mansion. The girl in his arms made a small noise but stilled after a second. Oz giggled in his ear, and Gilbert smiled. He began walking.

Oz was mumbling something into his hair, but slowly trailing off as sleep and fatigue overtook him. (Though, to Gilbert's utmost relief, the death grip Oz had on him didn't loosen.) Alice was still snoring softly, and Gilbert could only smile while they exited the wintry landscape into another wonderland all together. His dark hair swirled in the air, tickling his sleeping master's face.

Far behind them, their snow angels lay on the floor like paper cut-outs encrusted on the ground—the same but different. Alice's had a "halo" around it due to her hair, Oz's was blurred at the edges, and Gilbert's was long-reaching and smoothly swept. At the edges of their "wings," breaks appeared between them, where Oz had taken up Gilbert and Alice's hands. They were all connected by those singular points.

The trio left the footprint-littered snow to be covered by fresh falling flakes. Tomorrow, the marks of their games would surely be gone, but today, there still remained blissful evidence.

Snow crunched under his boots and smoke was dancing between his lips and nose, but all Gilbert could think of was how nice it would be…

If only snow could erase everything as easily as it did their footsteps.


End file.
